Production begins at Royal Enfield Vallam Vadagal plant

Eicher Motors begins commercial production at Royal Enfield Vallam Vadagal plant, Chennai. This is the company's third plant.

At the end of last month, Eicher Motors Ltd rose in the value game as the fourth most valuable automaker. As Royal Enfield‘s parent company, the value proposition saw the two-wheeler maker beat competitors with higher revenues. In business parlance, Eicher Motors is a stock of strong volumes, and earnings growth. Now the company has begun manufacturing at its Royal Enfield Vallam Vadagal plant.

Steady sales volumes for Royal Enfield despite a sluggish backdrop has allowed Eicher Motors to cut its commercial vehicles business losses. In Q2 2017, Royal Enfield reported 24.7% growth over Q2 2016 at 183,731 units sold. Growth for Indian leisure and premium bike segments comes from bikers choosing to move towards high-end offerings, and Royal Enfield is equipped to meet demand through a current retail network of 700 stores.

This month saw Bajaj and Triumph announce a global non-equity partnership after months of speculation on which alliance Bajaj was moving towards. In the meantime, no such talk has been heard through the grapevine regarding Royal Enfield as the company continues to grow from strength to strength, while dominating the Indian mid-size motorcycle market (250-750cc).

Royal Enfield has now gotten underway with commercial production at its third manufacturing facility at Vallam Vadagal, Chennai. The 50 acre Vallam Vadagal plant will manufacture Royal Enfield motorcycles for India and international markets.

For FY 2017-18, combined production capacity for all three plants is pegged at 825,000 units. In FY 2016-17, Royal Enfield produced and sold 667,135 motorcycles, close to its installed capacity. The new plant has an installed production capacity of 300,000 motorcycles per annum in the first phase.

Land at Vallam Vadagal was acquired in October 2014. Construction got underway 15 months earlier at the Royal Enfield Vallam Vadagal plant. Production capacity is in line with meeting expected level of growth. Company sales has grown at a compounded rate of over 55% in these last 6 years. Investment is planned at Rs 800 crores, mostly towards Vallam Vadagal plant capacity expansion, new products and platforms, and technical Centres in Leicester, UK and Chennai, India. Investment is being funded through internal accruals.

Royal Enfield’s dominance in the mid-capacity 250-750 cc motorcycle market is undisputed. Bajaj’s attempt to take a slice of that pie has stagnated at about 1100 units, far short of the 10,000 Dominar units the company initially planned to sell each month.